


Strange Little Girl

by frostmrajick



Category: GAIMAN Neil - Works, Torchwood
Genre: F/M, Fragile Things, M/M, Other, Strange Little Girls, Transgender, kind of fanfic, kind of original
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 12:36:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2773226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostmrajick/pseuds/frostmrajick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Torchwood has a new team member who finds a comrade in Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Little Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Really weird but close to my heart. Will probably make no sense unless you read the end notes, and even then no guarantees. You've been warned (hopeyoulikeanyway).

**New Age**  
She had secrets. He could tell. Not just because everyone here had secrets, some that would eventually be told and some they would die with (some of those would be told, too, after death), but also because of how she was. Quiet, focused to the point of obsession, blocking out the entire world around her. Sometimes, it was like she went off into her own head, her own world.  
She is inscrutable, and she intrigues him. For the first time in his life, he thinks he might have met someone who is as big a mystery as he is. Well, probably not, even he doesn’t know that much about himself, but she’s actually in the running. Just when he thinks he has some part of her figured out, she’ll say or do something that shatters every impression he’d gained of her. He’s still working on his first impression of her now, months after she joined.  
Then the world fell apart, and so did she, and he finally saw a true part of her. Just one piece, he’s sure, but that’s all it takes to make him fall.

**Monday’s Child**  
She had seen her teammates turned into demons, had watched her best friend die (just because he had come back to life soon after didn’t make it any less traumatizing). Her cool, calm, quiet exterior had fallen, and she had cried for the first time in years. He had come to her and held her, and she had felt like a jerk because he had seen so much more pain than she had, had lost more than she could imagine. He had felt like a jerk because, despite all that, he didn’t know how to help. All he could offer was a promise that they would fix everything, and that he would never leave her. She offered the same. Neither believed themselves, not like they believed each other.

**Silence**  
It’s Christmas Eve, and they’re the only ones there, playing memories. Of course, both remember more than they’d like, and so the memories come out only reluctantly, in threads that must be woven together over time. This much is only because of the wine, and only because it’s easier to unravel when the one next to you isn’t exactly complete, either. He tells of the children he abandoned, one of them his own. She tells of the two years she went sane. He confesses that he’s not sure he can love, not when he can never die. She confesses that she’s not sure she can live, not when she’s crushed by memories and possibilities. Neither (both) cry as they speak. He admits he’s only living for the stars, and the man he knew. She admits she’s only hoping for the one she could know.  
They look at each other, and know.

**Bonnie’s Mother**  
It’s New Year’s, and they’re alone again (he lives there, and she’s there more than she’s at her house, so she might as well, too). One thing leads to another, and before they realize what’s happening (not that they ever really do), they are locked together, holding each other like they wish they could hold themselves together. He kisses her, lifts her onto the table, and she makes no protest because there’s nothing she wants more, only—  
He stops without her having to tell him to. He asks her what’s wrong, and she can’t explain, only it’s not right, this isn’t her.  
He understands what she means, how badly she wants it, but not like this. He smiles and reassures her that he’s been with people with both genders (sometimes at the same time) and people with no genders and people with genders mankind has no words for. Lucky for her, he’s a fifty-first century man, and no matter what she is, what she wants, he’s seen stranger. No matter what, he can give her what she wants.  
She looks at him, and he looks back, and for the first time, ever, she feels like she’s more than what everyone sees, more than what she wants them to see. She’s just herself. Which is really all she’s ever wanted.  
They make love, and feel like they’re putting two halves together.

**Heart of Gold**  
The others don’t know when the two became how they are. Perhaps it was sudden, perhaps subtle, but they became two, and one. They’ll both stay late and arrive early, if they leave at all. Something will be said, and they’ll look at each other as if they are thinking the same thing. (And they are, as evidenced by how they sometimes finish each other’s sentences.) They’ll lose someone, and they’ll have the same brief look of absolute heartbreak, quickly covered by laughter, or blankness. They’ll touch as though they don’t realize they’re touching, like they’re the same person and it’s only natural to be so close.  
It’s not sex. The others can see that. He still flirts with anything that moves, she still keeps her distance from the same. It’s almost a brother-sister thing, but deeper. One of them figures it out one day, saying that the two are like comrades in arms, like two soldiers who have come back from a war, and they are the only ones who know how the other feels. That silences the others for a moment. It is right. It makes them wonder what their common war is.

**Love**  
She knows the one with the sad eyes wanted their leader. Still does. She sees him looking at the other man, with something more than sadness, and at her with something not quite angry. He thinks they are together. She doesn’t know if they are. They make love sometimes, yes, but it’s a searching kind of love. It’s a best friends kind of love, like companionship, twinning, made physical. They understand each other. They love each other. But it’s not passion. There’s still room in their leader’s life for that.  
So she’s happy when her lover winks at the sad-eyed boy, when he flirts, and when he finally asks the boy into his office as they’re all leaving. She leaves with them, that day, to give the two boys their time.  
The next day, the sad-eyed boy is not sad. He’s thoughtful, confused, as though trying to make sense of what cannot be made sense of.  
The day after that, he smiles at her, and she knows that he understands, as much as anyone can. He has accepted their roles. He knows that their leader can love them both, separately but equally, that she is no competition for him.  
That’s okay, because she knows that he is no competition for her, either.

**Time**  
She shouldn’t take it personal, when he leaves, but she does. She’d thought they were inseparable, and then he left, left her alone, a half person missing her other.  
She does what she’s always done. She pretends it doesn’t faze her. Someone will wince after saying his name, and she just shrugs and says It is what it is. She has had years of practice in not caring, and she doesn’t (she says).  
She comes in early and stays late. The others think it’s unhealthy, but she doesn’t hear them. (She pretends not to, and she’s had so much practice, gotten so good at pretending, that it’s almost the same.) She falls asleep at her desk, or his, and eventually gives up going home altogether. It feels empty in the building, but she can’t stand the thought of it being any emptier. Besides, when (if) he comes back, it’ll be here. Not that she’s waiting for him.  
(Even she doesn’t believe herself there.)

**Strange**  
She sees him sometimes, or thinks she does. (Or thinks she thinks she does, like when you’ve convinced yourself it was all just a dream, and then turn around and realize it was real after all.)  
She’ll walk to work, thinking of the next mission, the last mission, poetry, rock music, anything but him, and then she’ll stop and spin, certain that she’d just caught a glimpse of blue cloth, of black hair. But then she can’t find it again. She spends the rest of the day thinking of him, looking for him, but that’s exactly when he doesn’t show up.  
Not until she stops again, only to catch a glimpse of black hair, of blue cloth.

**Happiness**  
She throws herself into the job like saving others is the only way she’ll save herself. He dedicated his life to this, and so she does, as well. Somebody has to be him, and if it can’t be him, it should be her.  
Their heart pulls her aside one day, tells her she’s destroying herself, that she’s not him. They all miss him, but that’s no excuse to erase herself. She thinks about that and realizes the other girl was right. She cries at that, as she realizes that he really is gone, and she is alone.  
Then she lifts her head and goes back to work. Only this time, she does it for herself.

**Raining Blood**  
She gives commands and they follow. The angry one had been second in command, and he should have been the one to take charge after their leader left, but it’s her they follow, and no one questions or wonders.  
She’s always been quiet, and her time of sanity made her almost silent, but she will not let lose anyone else. So she lifts her head and raises her voice and says what needs to be said. She’s only surprised at how easy it is.  
When he left, she’d thought her world would end again. For a moment, she’d felt like she had a chance at being whole, and then she was once again ripped in two. But now she feels closer than ever, like she’s walking uphill and the end is just out of sight, but now she’s near the top and soon, soon, she’ll be able to see everything.  
Sometimes she wonders if she would have come so far had he stayed. Sometimes she wonders if she would have gone farther.  
Then she shakes her head, straightens her shoulders, and deals with this present, because that’s what he would have done, and it’s what she will do.

**Rattlesnake**  
She started wearing his coat while he was gone. It wasn’t anything she decided, a way to keep him close or anything, at least not consciously. But one day, she was working late, long after all the others had gone home, and it was cold and raining, and she had forgotten to bring her own jacket. So she took the first free one she found. One of his. (And she hadn’t stopped, and touched it, and smelled it, and slipped it on ever so carefully, as though trying on a new skin.)  
She came in the next day and saw on their faces, for just a moment, the relieved joy as they collectively thought He’s back. She hated the way their faces fell the next moment, especially the boy with the sad eyes. How much sadder they got then, turning away from her, as he excused himself to make coffee.  
Still, she didn’t take it off. To be honest, she was surprised how well it fit her. She’s not as tall as he is (was?), not as broad, but it feels like a lover’s arms about her, like that new skin.  
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror that day, and for a second, she knew what they had felt, that startled but joyous relief. Unlike them, it didn’t fade to sorrow when she saw the truth. She stood before the mirror for almost an hour, looking and seeing. People, men and women, have told her that she is beautiful, but she never saw it. Not until now. Now, looking in the mirror, she sees a new person. It’s still her, but her as she’s never seen herself before. It’s as though the best of her stepped out, and it’s him.  
She knows it’s not the coat, and she would give it back in a second if it’s owner returned. It’s worked its magic. He’s worked his magic. But the skin fits, and so she wears it, for the first time in her life, proudly.

**Real Men**  
Suddenly, the day comes when he sees a glimpse of blue and black, and he turns, and there he is. He can’t move for a moment, can only look. The other smiles and takes the steps to close the gap between them. He opens his arms and the first falls into them, falls into him, one again.  
You did it, the new one whispers. I see you.

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on Neil Gaiman's short stories "Strange Little Girls" from Fragile Things.  
> I had this story in my head about a girl who saw aliens and told everyone about it; she was called crazy and put in a mental institute. The Doctor comes and realizes her story, assuring her that she's not crazy. Thinking she'll make a good addition to Torchwood, he takes her there, and she joins the team. There, she meets Jack. All her life, she's kept herself hidden, small and quiet. With Jack, who doesn't even see gender and who has seen his fair share of troubles and so is more open to others', she starts to feel comfortable exploring herself. When he leaves to go after the Doctor at the end of series one, she deals with missing him by taking his place. She eventually becomes more male, more confident, stronger. And then he returns. May someday do the whole story, since this was just supposed to be a way of working through it before the real writing, anyway.  
> Like I said, it makes no sense, but I'm hoping someone else will see the beauty I saw in it, and then that would be worth it.


End file.
